SmartWings Motorized Outdoor Shades 5% Openness

We have a screened in back porch which gets sun in the afternoon/evening, so we wanted shades to decrease that bright sun. I was also looking to improve the capabilities of my Smart Home, so I was looking online for sunshades and found Smart Wings amongst other brands. After looking at all the reviews and comparing the capabilities I decided to go with Smart Wings. I had a couple of questions before I ordered so sent an e-mail and got a quick response with useful answers. One of the great things about these shades is the are compatible with the Matter protocol. This is a relatively new protocol for smart home devices which is nice because it is compatible all smart home apps, including Google Home, which I use. Matter will also function if the internet is down. The other nice thing was that it used the Threads standard to communicate instead of Wi-Fi. Threads is a secure, communication protocol that Matter can use in addition to Wi-Fi. The advantage is it doesn't require a lot of power so if you have a battery-operated device, it will not use a lot of the battery life just to communicate with other devices. I ordered the available fabric samples to look at which one would work well with our porch. I followed the measuring instructions and sent in the order. The next day I received an e-mail from Smart Wings with a question about the order to make sure I had it correct. The shade came pretty quickly, and installation went smoothly. The shades have a guidewire so that they don't move when it's windy. We were installing them inside the screen-in porch, because our home-owners association wouldn't allow us to install them on the outside. Also, we are planning on installing 3 of them eventually so I didn't really like how all those guidewires would look so I didn't install them. Instead, I decided to use 5/16-inch quick release pins connected to eye hooks. They fit nicely in the holes at the side of the rod on the bottom of the shade where the guidewires would go. In the attached picture the moiré appearance is because the screen is behind it. That wouldn't happen if there was no screen. Overall, I have been happy with the entire process, and I will buy more. The only slight negative I could say is I wish they had a "built-in" option to keep the shades from moving too much in the wind other that the guidewires.

Took the measurements for three units for lanai. Received exactly as ordered. Simple install. Game changer for our westward facing lanai. Very pleased with product, customer service and easy installation. Price compared to local purchase and install saved thousands.